Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis)

About the Bird

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Seen/Heard at Decorah, Decorah North

Diet Gray Catbirds are ground foragers. During the summer, they eat large numbers of invertebrates, including beetles, ants, grasshoppers, midges, caterpillars, moths, dragonflies, and crane flies. Like many ground foragers, they forage on the ground in the morning and move higher into trees as the day warms and insects rise. Gray Catbirds also eat fruit, including holly berries, elderberries, poison ivy berries, green briar berries, bay berries, blackberries, cherries, grapes, and strawberries. Ornithologist Arthur Cleveland Bent stated that they were known to eat cheese, bread, raisins, currants, milk, corn flakes and puffed wheat soaked in milk, mushrooms, garbage, boiled potato, fried fish, beef stew, peanuts, and beef soup, while nature blogger Joe Smith suggests putting out grape jelly and soaked raisins to attract them to your feeder. They will destroy the eggs and nestlings of other birds, but it is not known whether they eat them.

Nesting Gray Catbirds nest from early May through mid August. Females use twigs, straw, bark, leaves, plant stalks, and mud to build bulky, cup-shaped nests, which they line with soft materials, including more grass, rootlets, hair, and pine needles. Males bring materials to the nest but do very little construction. Gray Catbirds lay 1-6 turquoise green eggs and produce one to three clutches per year. Females incubate eggs for 12-15 days and both parents tend young, which leave the nest 10-11 days after hatching. To learn more, visit Cornell’s website.